Author: Sarah Galvin

As a kid I read a lot of stories about survival and kids building homes. My favorites were the Jack London books about wolves, Hatchet, My Side of the Mountain, The Boxcar Children Series, and the Berenstain Bears book about the clubhouse (before Berenstain Bears acquired their current conservative Christian bent.)

Last Wednesday culminated in an Auburn Taco Bell parking lot with several friends wearing seven-layer burritos as bras. I alternately shotgunned Rainier and taco sauce packets, reeling from the delight of what for most of us had been our first Marilyn Manson concert.

The turn-of-the-century Victorian that houses Outlander Brewing is so pristine it looks like it was built last week. It could be a stylish good witch’s house, or some obscure European Earl’s summer home.

Well-written confessional essays facilitate a sense of belonging and connection for both the reader and writer. They involve the unveiling and exploration of a personal truth the author has previously concealed.

During a recent move, one of the first boxes I carefully padded and taped contained a collection of dirt-covered bottles. They’re literally garbage—I began collecting a decade ago when my friend Riley, a professional treasure hunter, found a map of Seattle’s dumps from the turn of the century.

Occasionally my mom calls me from Ikea wordlessly screaming. I always know where she is, because it’s very specific—the combination of a stage-whispered scream that implies respect for fellow shoppers, and the kind of awful scream in nightmares where your sleeping lungs refuse you full volume.

I first visited The Double Header shortly after moving to the International District in 2014. I explored the ID and Pioneer Square as often as school and work would allow, searching for the oldest existing bars with the cheapest existing whiskey—Joe’s, The Central Saloon, and Fort St. George were favorites.

While I was couch surfing through grad school four years ago, I had this incredibly vivid dream about living in a 1920s building in the International District called the Alps Hotel. In the dream nothing really happened, but the place was a taller, narrower, more streamlined version of itself, like a cathedral, and I woke up with an unplaceable sense of hope.

There’s this incredible party that happens in Georgetown every August. There are carnival rides made of bike parts, bands, a bike race, and not only tall bikes, but tall bike jousting. I knew then that I had to be a part of this somehow.

When my cell phone demolition derby began, I wasn’t even drunk. I was cleaning my apartment one afternoon and leaned forward at an angle that sent the phone sliding into a compost heap. I don’t even know what object in the compost was hard enough to shatter a phone screen—the bin contained 95% profoundly decomposed avocado skins.

You’ve seen Lady Krishna—hair dyed a glowing primary color beneath a dramatic hat of Fellini proportions, round mid-century glasses that would look at home in Warhol’s Factory. Talking to her, one feels like she’s really been on the sets of Fellini films, partied at the Factory, and a little of these realms’ magic is transferred by her hugs.

Prior to a vacation centered around visiting my Southern belle girlfriend Mary Anne’s family, I imagined the state of Virginia as a series of covered bridges and water mills and some sort of taxidermy-laden, water mill-themed version of Japanese love hotels.